Seen With Blind Eyes
by Ti
Summary: Hunter: the Reckoning based, my appologies, but the page-breaks I used don't seem to have carried over, so transitions may seem a bit sudden.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

  
"Every single time I feel the burn I try to throw it away,

A fast fix for the brokenness of everyday."

-_Screams of the Undead_, by Demon Hunter

Alcohol had helped Jennifer Griffin to forget most of the last five years. All that she knew was that when she was eighteen, she'd left home to go to college, and had promptly flunked out. Too embarrassed to tell her parents what had happened, she just kept living in her apartment, telling them that she was still in school. Some amount of time after that (cheap liquor had blurred exactly how long) she had become unable to continue playing rent, and so had lost her apartment, too. Selling off some of her possessions which were no longer of any use to her (such as a television), she earned just enough money to develop an alcohol problem. Now, the only possessions she had were a sun-faded yellow tank top, an equally faded set of jeans, a handheld radio, a crusty teddy bear, a small cup to take handouts in, and a grocery store shopping basket to carry it in.

Jennifer Griffin honestly had no idea where she was or how she'd got there. It sure wasn't the city that she'd been in the morning before. Of course, she'd probably followed a drinking-binge to the city she was now in, as she often did. Her head was pounding and the side of her neck stung like someone had driven a two-bladed knife into it during that time that she couldn't remember. She often ended up like that, or with a bunch of slash marks all over her body. This had led her to the conclusion that she was quite a rowdy person when she got drunk, and this was a very true conclusion.

"God, I wonder what all I've got this time," she mumbled, staring down at her hands. She noticed a gold band on her left ring finger. After inspecting the ring, she straightened her spine out against the back-side of the bus stop where she'd been sitting, apparently the thing was made of 18 karat gold. "I wonder who I married last night," she chuckled. This was the third such wedding ring to appear on her hand since she'd lost her apartment. It didn't much trouble her that these rings had been appearing, considering that they always sold for a decent amount. She went to put the ring in her pocket, but felt that there was a piece of paper folded up in there. She pulled it out, unfolded it, and had barely begun to read it before she tossed it on the ground.

"Jennifer, dear, I love you, why do you keep selling my wedding ring?" the paper said. The words on the paper didn't bother her quite so much as the way they were written. It was her handwriting, but it was far too steady for her to have written it while she had been drinking.

Jennifer picked up her shopping basket and began to walk away from the paper. She went slowly at first, but eventually broke out into a run. She couldn't help but feel a bit sorry for whoever it was that she apparently kept marrying and blacking out about, but it was a good way to get free beer.

After a few minutes of paranoid running, Jennifer came to the conclusion that she liked the strange city that she'd woken up in this morning. It looked a lot better than the town that she'd been in the night before, for one there weren't bars on absolutely every window. On top of that, people didn't look like they afraid to be out on the streets. This sort of safety reminded her of hometown. As a matter of fact, the only way she could really tell that she hadn't gone home was the fact that the streets weren't named after presidents and colleges.

"Maybe I'll stay here," she muttered to herself. "It's so much like home that it's almost like I've been here before. Heh, I feel like I could run across Mr. Irondale whenever I turn a corner, out for his morning jog, just like I always used to at home..." by this time, she had slowed down from a run to a casual stroll. Of course, she was paying more attention to her memories of her hometown than she was to the road in front of her, which is why she didn't notice the man that she walked into.

"Terribly sorry," the man said upon impact, sounding as though he'd been paying as little attention to the road as Jennifer had been, "I don't think I know you... are you new around here?"

"Yeah," Jennifer answered, being just shocked back to reality herself, "um... I'm Jennifer Griffin," with that, she extended a slightly grimy hand that hadn't been washed lately except in a drainage ditch three days before.

"I'm Samuel Gardner," the man with black hair and five-o-clock shadow at seven in the morning answered, shaking Jennifer's hand, "I preach over at St. Maximilian's Church. Try stopping by sometime."

"Maybe I will," Jennifer responded, putting her hand back in her pocket, "but I'm not sure I'll be here until Sunday, I don't even know if it is Sunday."

"It's Friday. Listen, if you ever need a place to crash for a few days, I'm sure I could arrange something. There are a couple backrooms in St. Maximilian's that haven't been used in a few years, I'm sure that I could get a few people from the parish to help me renovate one of them."

"That'd be nice, thanks."

"Yeah, well, I guess I'll see you later if you decide to show on Sunday." With that, the dark-haired man, Samuel Gardner, walked away, leaving Jennifer Griffin once more alone with her thoughts.

_He reminds me a lot of Mr. Irondale_, she thought, maybe saying it aloud, she wasn't really sure which, _looks a little bit like him talks in that same weird way, he even walks the same way, a slight limp on his left leg. Wow, this place really is just like home, I wonder what other surprises await me here. _

Jennifer heard a car's horn screeching at her before she realized that she'd been walking across a street. The black limousine with tinted windows rushing by her seemed more than a little out of place. And, she noted, it seemed to be in a strange bit of a hurry, almost as if it were part of some sort of conspiracy.

_And what's next?_ She thought, _little green men? Or maybe Bigfoot? Really, it's just a little strange, not like there's some sort of secret government cover-up. I always have been good at making monsters of old furniture_... She reached into the shopping basket and pulled the handheld radio out of it. She flipped the switch and hoped that the batteries were still working.

"...another body today," the man's voice on the local news said, "making this the thirteenth in a bizarre series of murders in which the victims have had their throats torn out, and several other bloody wounds on the body usually. This time, the victim was found with a strange spiked symbol carved into his chest. Police now suspect some sort of cult involvement.

"In possibly related news, the fifth victim of a vicious dog attack was found this morning after being missing for three days. All of the animal mauling victims have been found in the woods outside of the city. Last contact from the police states that they suspect a link between these events, that maybe the cult is using attack dogs to guard their territory."

"My, my," Jennifer muttered to herself, turning the radio off and putting it back in the grocery basket. "It looks like my stay here might be more interesting than I thought." Jennifer saw a park in the distance and began to walk toward it. Along the way, a furry movement pressed against one of her legs alerted Jennifer to a large, mangy looking dog prowling around at her feet.

"What's your name?" she asked the dog, kneeling down beside it. She didn't really expect anything more than the bark that it gave her, but judging her earlier conversation with herself about government conspiracies and little green men, she was hoping for something more. Looking at the thing's neck, she noticed that it didn't have a nametag. "Well, run along now," she sighed, shooing the dog off.

Once she got to the park, Jennifer collapsed on the first bench she could find. While she couldn't remember what had happened the night before, it had sure worn her out. As her eyelids slid shut, Jennifer saw the mangy dog running into the park and up to the bench that she was lying on. She would have seen more, but the blackness of sleep soon claimed her.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

"Keep your eye on prize,

And your mind your goals,

And never fall behind."

-_Dream Yourself Awake_, by The Crüxshadows

Samuel Gardner, while not really expecting Jennifer to show up on Sunday, had kept true to his promise and, with the help of the parish, changed one of the store rooms into a bedroom. It was, therefore, a pleasant surprise for him when the young woman actually did arrive on Sunday.

"Ah, Miss Griffin, it is a pleasure to see you again," Samuel said early Sunday evening when Jennifer walked through the doors of the church. He'd been just about ready to leave when she arrived.

"Call me Jennifer," she laughed, "or Jen, or Jenny, but not Miss Griffin, it's too formal for my taste. So, Mr. Gardner, where's the room?"

"Right this way," Samuel answered, "I do hope that you'll forgive the lack of a shower in the church, but such things as this were never anticipated when this place was built," by this time, they'd arrived in the small but functional room which was to be Jennifer's for the time being, "but you'll find that there are otherwise adequate restroom facilities two doors to the right of this room. Is there anything else you'd like to know?"

"Um, yeah, what about food and TV?"

"For food, there's a kitchen right across the hall. And I am truly sorry, but we do not seem to have a television, there is however an old radio in the storeroom one door to the right if you'd like me to go get it for you."

"Nah, I'll get it later," Jennifer shrugged, "but thanks, Sam. It's been a long time since I've had a bed to sleep in. This'll be great, thanks."

"Samuel, if you would be so kind. I really don't like to be so informal."

"Oh, sorry, I just kinda talk like that, never much of one for formalities myself."

"Yes, so I've noticed. Well, if you need nothing else, I will be on my way."

_She certainly seems well-natured enough_, Samuel thought as he began his stroll home, _I wonder how she ended up in such a dreadful position. I suppose I should ask her when next we meet, mayhap I should go there tomorrow._ He let his mind wander for a moment as he took in the beauty of the autumn sunset. _But such wonderings are for another day. I wonder what Becky's cooked for dinner_...

It was shortly after he'd finished thinking that that Samuel Gardener arrived home. He fumbled about in his pocket for a moment, struggling to find his house keys. Still fruitless after what seemed an eternity o trying to locate his keys, he walked over to the gate into the backyard and swung it open. The sound of his steel-toed boots clanking against the cobblestone path that he'd put in last summer immediately set Ripper, his pet Doberman which had been named by his seven year old son, to barking up a storm.

"Relax, boy," he chuckled, "Nobody trying to break into the house. Just good old Samuel Gardner, minister of the Lord, owner of the house and now savior of the homeless."

"Is that you, Sam?" his wife, Rebecca, called from the kitchen window that overlooked the backyard.

"Yeah, I couldn't find my keys, so I had to come in through the backyard. Then Ripper decided that I was some kind of burglar."

"Well, come on in and wash up, supper's ready."

Jennifer Griffin laid back on her cot and pondered going into the storeroom to go get the radio. After all, she didn't have much better to do. It took her a moment to conquer her inner demons of laziness, but Jennifer managed to pull herself off of the bed and onto her feet.

"Okay," she muttered to herself, "storeroom was...um...one door to the right, I think..." she ventured out into the hallway, "why on earth would you ever build a church with all this extra stuff in it? I mean, it's like they were planning on turning this place into a mini-fortress."

She swung the door to the storeroom open and was amazed by the vast piles of junk that lay within. There was easily enough stuff stacked in the piles, resting on the shelves, and squirreled away in the cabinets to carpet a large house. One thing in particular that caught her was a shelf upon which rested a wooden stake and a hammer, both of which looked old enough that they'd crumble to dust if she so much as breathed on them, that is, if the weight of all the cobwebs that they were blanketed in didn't crush them first. _I wonder what they ever thought they'd need that for_, Jennifer thought, _of course, I don't even know where I am. This could be a church that was built way back when people used to believe in vampires and such nonsense_. After tearing her eyes away from the stake and hammer, Jennifer searched around for the radio, turning up various other oddities, such as a crumbling, leather bound copy of the bible with a few of the books of the Apocrypha, and a cross made of emerald. All in all, it probably took Jennifer about twenty minutes to find the radio.

"Ugh, this thing is heavy," she grunted as she lifted the large old thing up. It took quite a bit of effort for her to manage to shimmy the door open since both of her hands were in use carrying the archaic two-way transmission device. "wonder who would hear me if I used this thing to broadcast. Probably no one considering that radio's dead." At this point, Jennifer was in her room, and, inspired by her previous comment, was humming Video Killed the Radio Star as she plugged the radio into the empty wall socket.

Now that she was done with that, Jennifer Griffin took a moment to survey the contents of the room that she was staying in, not that she hadn't done so before, but she felt that she should take another look at it for some reason or another. There was a lamp in one corner, against the far wall was a bookshelf lined with books on more subjects than she could possibly imagine. Her bed rested alongside the left wall, directly across the room from where the radio was now stashed. In the middle, where she was standing now, was a small rug, oblong in shape with alternating rings of red and orange.

Jennifer knelt down and turned the radio on. The broadcaster was still going on about the murder that had happened early Friday morning, with various theories and such as to why a man who apparently had no enemies would be murdered so savagely. Then, she heard a scratching sound. She turned the volume up, but the scratching stayed soft. Jennifer got up and walked out of the room, following the sound to the front door.

She swung the door open and was greeted by the large, mangy dog that had followed her to the park on Friday. It had a piece of paper folded up in its mouth.

"What have you got there, boy?" she asked the dog, scratching it behind its ear, "come on, give me the paper." Then, the dog dropped the paper. Jennifer unfolded the note only to be horrified by what was written on the inside. It was the note that she'd found in her pocket when shed first awakened in this city. "Why did you bring this to me?" she asked the dog, thoughts of paranoid fantasy once more dancing around the inside of her head. The dog, of course, didn't answer. It stood still, panted, and wagged its tail.

"Well, c'mon, heel boy," she commanded, and the dog followed her to the back storeroom, "we can at least set you up a bed." Jennifer dug through piles upon piles of refuse, searching for something for the dog to sleep in, looking up only when the dog barked at her. It was pushing a ratty, faded teal doggy-bed toward her with its nose. "My, my, quite a talented pooch, aren't you?" With that, she picked the bed up, and placed it in her room, just a few inches left of center on the red and orange rug. "You can sleep here," she said, "at least I'll have someone to keep me company while this place is empty..."


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

"Everywhere I go they all stare,

I don't understand why they care,

They stare at me all in black,

And when I turn, they stare at my back."

-_Leave Me Alone_, by The Crüxshadows

Kelly Aprils got a strange kick out of everyone staring at her bizarre appearance as she strolled down the street. At the same time, however, she hated it. _Yeah, I'm a Goth, get over it people_, she thought. She really would have liked to scream it out loud, but then they'd stare at her even more.

"What're you starin' at?" she shouted at one man whose eyes had lingered on her for a few seconds too long. As the man began to back away, she bit down on a large air bubble in her gum, creating a cracking sound loud enough to make everyone who heard it jump.

"Yeah, that's right, keep movin'," Kelly snarled. Admittedly, her blood-colored hair and torn black clothing were quite eye-catching, but still, she hated the feeling of people watching her, especially not on days like this, where she hadn't slept well the night before. She'd had the dream again the night before, she wasn't really sure whether or not it was a nightmare, that bit seemed to change every time.

Other than her reaction to it, the dream was the same every time. She always found herself staring up at Jesus while he was being crucified. His blood would drip down onto shoulders, with occasional drops falling into her gaping mouth. Then, she rose up into the air and pried loose the nails that bound Jesus to the cross. Once he was safely on the ground, he would place his crown of thorns on her head.

With the crown digging into her flesh, Kelly would once again ascend into the air, this time she would stop and position herself against the cross, where she would soon feel nails dig into her body as she, too, was nailed to the wooden beams. Then, Jesus would whisper to her, but when she awakened she could never remember what he'd told her. She thought that it must be a slight memory of what he was whispering that made her change her opinion as to whether or not it was a nightmare.

After Jesus whispered to her, Kelly felt a light shine down from above. The light pushed down on her shoulders harder than anything she'd ever felt. Yet, the pressure was somehow relieving. Eventually, the pressure pushed off her skin, and yet, she had more skin beneath it, but this layer was paler. The layers of skin kept falling way until the whiteness of her flesh was enough to blind her. After she'd gone blind, she felt her very soul being unmade, and once that was finished, the little bits of what was left of her ascending to heaven. Then, in some way that she could never explain to anyone else, her consciousness transformed and she became a star. She only had one sense after she became a star, but it wasn't one that she'd ever had before, nor was it the sixth sense that she'd always heard tale of, it was something else entirely.

When she felt something soft and fleshy squish beneath her feet, Kelly was snapped out of her remembrance of the dream. She looked down and was disgusted by what she saw at her feet. No matter how jaded she always pretended to be, the sight of a human corpse whose throat had been torn out being crushed beneath her sneakers still made her stomach churn.

"Oh god..." she muttered as she pulled out her cell phone and dialed 9-1-1.

"And today, the fourteenth victim in the bizarre series of murders was found," the voice on Jennifer's radio said, "the body had no special markings on it, except for the throat being torn out as usual. Forensic investigators found absolutely no incriminating evidence on the body, no fingertips, no hairs, nothing. Police are still at a loss to explain these strange killings."

"You hear that, Patches?" Jennifer asked the dog, "another killing, I don't suppose you'd have any idea what's going on?" Jennifer laughed a little bit, the dog looked into her eyes and barked.

"You know," she commented, "you look an awful lot like a wolf." Patches just kept panting in that strange way that dogs do that makes them almost look like they're smiling.

"And here's your drink Mr. Gardner," Kelly muttered, speaking as much to herself as to anyone in the Gardner family, as she put the beverage in front of the priest. "So how's Ripper doing these days?"

"He's just fine," Rebecca Gardner answered absent-mindedly.

"Okay. Can I take your oder?"

"Cheeseburger," Samuel responded, folding up the menu and handing it to Kelly.

"I'll just have a salad," Mrs. Gardner followed.

"And you?" Kelly asked David, Rebecca and Samuel's son.

"Spaghetti."

"I hate waiting tables," Kelly quietly raged as she walked into the kitchen.

"Everyone does," snorted Michael, her fellow waiter, "but some of us have to do this to pay our way through college. You, on the other hand, just want more money."

"Hey, you try getting through high school on ten bucks a month."

"I already did, thank you very much."

There was, however, one thing that Kelly hated even more than waiting tables, and that was the piano. She'd never even wanted o learn how to play it, but her parents insisted that it would be good for her, they said that it would teach her something, she had never really listened when they were going on about it. It had taught her one thing, though, and that was how to hate an inanimate object.

Kelly couldn't sleep that night. Her thoughts just kept drifting back to the corpse she'd stepped on while walking to the diner where she worked. The man's face had looked almost as though he didn't know that he was having his throat torn out. But that couldn't be. Having parts of your body torn off was one of those things that you just couldn't help but noticing, kind of like if you're eating cold meat, you just notice it. Struck with a sudden desire, Kelly got out of bed, walked downstairs to the piano that she hated so much, and began to play it.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

"When you smile…

…Be happy for now"

-_Be Happy For Now_, by ATP

Simon Young was, to the extent of his knowledge, the only Wal-Mart greeter under the age of 75, having lived for only twenty-nine years. He was most assuredly not in it for the money, as it didn't pay particularly well. He did, however, enjoy just generally being a friendly person and making people smile, so, when his childhood dream of being a stand-up comedian fell through, he decided that this would be the next best line of work. After all, what could be better than making a living by trying to cheer people up?

_Being dead, or anything else that's not so mind-numbingly repetitive_, part of his mind chipped in. There had always been a part of him that disagreed with whatever he wanted, but it was easy enough to push it back. Everyone had an inner voice of dissent, and it was just easier for Simon to ignore it than it was for most people. His coworkers had given him quite a number of nicknames because of his eternal happiness. While he imagined that they weren't always meant kindly, he usually enjoyed them anyway, most especially 'Smiley' and 'Gingerbread Man'. In truth, he did very much resemble the gingerbread man from his employer's new ads, he wasn't terribly tall, his skin had that same shade as the cookie, and, just like the gingerbread man, his face was decorated with a smile that never went away.

"Hey, Smiley, you hear that some girl found number 14 yesterday?" one of Simon's coworkers asked.

"Yeah, too bad, really," Simon sighed, still smiling, "You have to wonder what drives a person to do that kind of thing. I mean, everyone gets angry, but who gets mad enough to tear fourteen people's throats out?"

"I sure dunno, but what really scares me is that it could be, like, anyone, y'know? For all anyone knows, I could be the killer, or even you, Smiley. I mean, who knows what sort of evil thoughts may be brewing beneath that grin of yours, and what are you so happy about, anyway?"

"Always happy, because I'm always alive. And, hey, being alive sure beats the alternative by a long shot."

"How very true. So what all are we expecting in today?" the coworker asked, as Simon almost always knew exactly what was going to arrive due to his friendliness with the shipping managers.

"Um, we got a new case of camcorders, few boxes of video games…what department do you work in?"

"Electronics."

"Okay, there's some more extension cords, a pair of TVs, shipment of Xboxes, some light fixtures, though I'm not sure that's your department… and that's all that springs to mind. Oh, and on an unrelated note, that bizarre firearms section is getting a shipment in today."

"What makes it so bizarre?"

"We try and pass ourselves off as a family store, and yet we sell guns, and guns kill people, so one can conclude that it is safe and family friendly to kill people?"

"Well, they're supposed to be used for sport."

"Yeah, but what if they're not? What if that guy who rips people's throats out, or to be equal, that girl who rips people's throats out, decides it would be quicker and easier to buy a gun here and just shoot people?"

"Well, there's a way they track what gun a bullet came from, not quite sure how that works, but then it'd put a stop to it real quick."

"Still, I just don't know, it seems wrong."

"Don't know what you're talking about. That's like saying that kids shouldn't be allowed to watch football because sometimes people get hurt, or race car driving because of occasional crashes. Accidents happen, you need to accept it."

"Keep staring, I might do a trick" was written in white across Kelly's otherwise black t-shirt. It was nine-thirty at night, and for some reason that she couldn't quite remember, she'd volunteered to pull the extremely late shift at the diner and needed to buy a liter or two of something with a huge amount of caffeine to keep herself awake until four thirty in the morning. Of course, the only place on her way to work was a Wal-Mart.

"Welcome to Wal-Mart," the man at the door said cheerfully as Kelly walked through the motion-sensitive doors. When she looked over at him, she couldn't help but laugh a little because he reminded her so much of the gingerbread man that the company used in their commercials.

Fifteen minutes and a liter of Mountain Dew later, Kelly was once more wearing the navy blue apron that she hated so much and serving hamburgers to people who had nothing better to do with their lives then come to the NiteOwl Diner at nine forty five and order food that wasn't remarkably tasty. So many of the faces were familiar, too, from the time that she'd worked this shift a month before. As a matter of fact, she could swear that there wasn't a single face that she hadn't seen either then or within the last week.

Patches seemed restless. He'd kept Jennifer up all night by pouncing on her and licking her face every time she started to nod off, he'd even bitten her once or twice when that hadn't worked. So, she'd passed the hours by tossing small objects to the other side of the room and having Patches fetch them. So much about the dog puzzled her, he'd fetch the objects without being told to fetch, if she asked him to go get her anything that was laying around the room, he'd go get it, despite the fact that he'd probably never even heard some of those words (such as shopping basket) before. The thing that confused her most, though, was that the dog didn't have a nametag or even a collar, almost as though he'd somehow taught himself to do all that.

At the moment, however, Jennifer was busy looking through the kitchen to find something to eat, and Patches was barking loudly from the bedroom across the hall. After finding nothing that particularly fascinated her in the cupboard, she moved on to the refrigerator. Pushing aside a few jars of mayonnaise and a bottle of ketchup, Jennifer noticed a six-pack of beer at the back.

"What's this doing at a church?" she wondered, "Ah well, Sam never said anything about not taking it, so…" She took the six-pack out of the fridge and walked back to her room. Once all the liquor was gone (and that didn't take too long), Jennifer lay on the bed unconscious, which probably better prepared her for what was to come.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

"Yesterday with eyes away, the briefness of a moment,

As in a blinding flash of light the world came remade,

Vague my life, a distant shadow filtered through my mind,"

-_Within_, by the Crüxshadows

"My, my, up a bit late, aren't we Mr. Gardner?" Kelly Aprils laughed, pulling a notepad and pen out of her apron.

"I don't know," Samuel Gardner sighed, "I just couldn't sleep, and some time around half past midnight, I started getting hungry. So, half an hour later or so, here I am, ordering a cheeseburger and a 7-up."

"Oh come, come now, surely you can pick a better drink than a 7-up to go with that burger."

"Nah, no caffeine in it, don't want to be up any later than I already am."

The bell hanging over the door chimed as someone walked into the diner. Those who looked up to see the source of the footsteps were not surprised by what they saw. A man with a slightly dirty black sweatshirt and torn jeans walked through the door. He looked slightly dazed, as though he were in that state of waking from a surreal dream. At the point where the dream still seems real, and the world of the waking to be the one which is unreal. The man looked at Kelly and his gaze lost its dreaminess as a wry smile spread across his face. While Kelly felt the man looked familiar, she couldn't quite place who he was.

"Table for one please," the man said. Michael grabbed a menu and showed the man to the only open table, the one at the front of the diner. All the while, though, the man kept staring at Kelly with that wry grin on his face.

After Kelly arrived with his drink, Samuel Gardner tapped her on the shoulder, "Who's that man who keeps staring at you?" he whispered.

"I don't know, but he's starting to make me nervous."

"Hey, can I have a word with you in the back?" Michael asked, coming up and tapping Kelly on the shoulder.

"Yeah…" Kelly answered, still gazing nervously at the man who was staring at her from the seat by the window. "Okay, what is it?" she asked once they'd gone back into the kitchen.

"That guy who's staring at you wants you to be his waiter, not me."

"What?"

"Yeah, so, uh, you wanna take him?"

"Guess so," Kelly sighed, "I mean, hey, he'll probably try an' make a good impression by leaving a big tip."

"Probably right," Michael chuckled.

"Alright, what'll you have?" Kelly asked the strangely familiar man at the table by the window.

"Just give me a slab of raw meat and a glass of water," the man snarled.

"You know you're gonna get sick if you just eat raw meat, right?"

"Who's the one paying?"

"Good point."

About a minute later, Kelly came back with the slab of beef on a white plate in her left hand and a glass of water in her right. As she set the raw meat down in front of the strange man, some of the blood that had dripped from the meat spilled from the plate onto Kelly's apron and dropping from there onto her dark navy blue and white Converse sneakers. Looking down at this, Kelly muttered a few obscenities.

The man grabbed the huge hunk of cow flesh in both hands and raised it up to his mouth. He sunk his teeth into the meat and pulled his head back to tear off enough to fill his mouth. He messily chewed the meat without closing his mouth. Blood from the meat dribbled down his chin and stained his sweatshirt. He soon washed down the bloody flesh by gulping his water, which likewise ran down his chin.

After staring disgustedly at this for a while, Kelly went back to the kitchen to see if Samuel Gardner's meal was ready yet. She returned to the dining area with the preacher's cheeseburger and soft drink. Sam looked up and when he beheld the strange man by the window, it was as though a veil had been torn away from in front of his eyes. The man's flesh was beginning to rot and his throat had been torn out. In this sudden burst of insight, Sam realized that the reason the man ate so messily was that so nobody would notice when things fell out of the area where his throat had once been. The rotting man suddenly rose to his feet, staring intently at Sam.

"BE THEIR SHEPHERD!" cried an echoing voice that only Sam could hear; it was a very familiar voice, his own in fact, though more thunderous, more resounding, more authoritative.

"Everyone! Get to the back of the building!" Sam shouted as he stood up, knocking over Kelly in his hurry. He pulled his silver cross on a leather string off of his neck and brandished it toward the creature. "Stay back!" he screamed as the cross began to give off a brilliant white glow.

Everyone was panicking as they ran toward the back of the building. Kelly, however was still laying on the floor, trying to figure out why everybody was shouting. She looked up and one moment she saw the strange restaurant patron who'd been staring at her all night, and the next, she realized why he was so familiar, he was the throat-less man that she'd stepped on yesterday. A bit of his flesh soaked in the saliva from his gaping maw fell down onto her apron and she become conscious of the fact that he was rotting while he stood.

"Oh fuck…" Kelly whispered. Then, she heard a voice that she'd never before heard while she was awake.

"This is to be your cross…" whispered the voice that, in her dreams, had always belonged to Jesus. Then, Kelly pulled herself to her feet and knocked the rotting man to the ground with a strength that she'd never had before and held him pinned to the ground by his shoulders. The man's left shoulder blade shattered beneath Kelly's newfound power. One of the man's rotting yellow teeth sunk into one of the waitress's wrists. "There's a service entrance in the back of the kitchen," Kelly shouted to Samuel Gardner, "Get the people out through there!"

A glowing ward surrounded Samuel and the people who had no idea what was going on as they made their way to the kitchen. Then, the rotting man pulled his legs up to his chest before raising them up into the air with as much strength as he could muster; this was, unfortunately, enough strength to knock Kelly off of his chest and flying into the wall.

The monster rose back up onto his feet and began shambling toward Kelly, who was, unfortunately, too worn out from tapping her previously unknown strength to keep on fighting. Then, as the rotting beast loomed over Kelly and began to kneel down as if to feast on her flesh, it's head caved inward as a frying pan that seemed to be wreathed in a green flame crushed its skull.

"Margaret Shaw," said the woman holding the flaming pan as she extended her empty hand for Kelly to grab.

"Kelly Aprils," the girl with the fire-engine red hair answered, grabbing Margaret's hand with her own ghoulishly pale hand.

"What just happened?" Michael asked as he came out from the table he'd been hiding behind, "there was no way that could have been real."

"Wish I could say," Kelly panted, "wish I could say…"


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

"I know the night is not as it would seem"

-_Self Control_, by Raf

Jennifer awoke from her alcohol induced slumber. The first thing she noticed was the darkness on the inside of her eyelids, this was soon followed by the realization of her pounding headache. She slowly opened her eyes and noticed that the ceiling fan slowly rotating above her head was rather blurry, as a matter of fact, the whole ceiling was blurry, as was the entire world until she raised her hands to rub her eyes. She covered her head with her pillow as she half expected Patches to be drooling on her face.

A few moments later, though, she realized that Patches wasn't drooling on the pillow, and that her throbbing headache wasn't going to go away unless she did something about it. She groggily pulled herself up off the bed, at least to the point where she was sitting up.

"Patches," she called. After about a minute, the shabby dog didn't show up, so Jennifer called his name again, this time with a quivering note of uncertainty in her voice, "Patches?" the dog still didn't come. Jennifer got up off the bed and shambled into the hallway, she called the dog again, still no response.

Jennifer shuffled to the bathroom and swung the medicine cabinet above the sink open, pausing for a moment beforehand to stare at her own reflection in the mirror on medicine cabinet's door. After she was done gazing at her own face, she pulled out a bottle of aspirin and popped a couple into her mouth. She then shut the medicine cabinet and downed the pills with some water from the sink. When she pulled her head up from the faucet, she saw something in the mirror that would change the course of her life.

"See it, and know the truth," her parents seemed to whisper in unison, though they were doubtlessly hundreds of miles away.

"But… wasn't that the guy who you found dead yesterday?" Michael asked Kelly, still in shock from what he'd seen.

"Yeah," she answered, "but it looks like the undertaker isn't exactly doing his job. So, uh, did anyone else hear Jesus?"

"Nah," Michael answered, "I just saw man turn into, like, a zombie or something and heard my sister telling me that I should put the dead to rest, whatever that means."

"Well, that's resoundingly mundane," Margaret scoffed, "I saw the words on my menu changing to tell me that I need to take back the night. Say, how exactly do you know what Jesus sounds like?"

"Yeah," Michael agreed, "How **do** you know that the voice you heard was Jesus? Oh, and there's nothing mundane about me hearing my sister's voice, she died in a car crash three and a half years ago."

"That's so sad," Kelly mumbled, "But I know what Jesus sounds like 'cuz of this recurring dream I have where I take him down off the cross and then I rise up and get nailed to it and then I become a star, wow, this sounds really stupid when I'm saying it, but rest assured, it is much more impressive when you actually go through it."

Simon Young was bored, and still didn't understand the new hours of the store. The place was open twenty-four hours on seemingly random days, and usually he was the one who got stuck at the door during the graveyard shift. Tonight, however, he'd been told to just wander the store and see if there was anybody that he could help; the last person he'd seen had been at quarter–til one in the morning, it was currently half-past two.

Simon wandered through the sporting goods section of the store, still fairly certain that any place that advertised itself as being family oriented (which, while he had never seen Wal-Mart directly referred to as far as he could remember, but the gingerbread man from their newer commercials definitely implied) should not carry any potentially lethal items. He heard a strange rattling sound coming from the next aisle over, then a sort of sinewy cracking sound.

He slowly wandered over to the place where he'd heard the sounds coming from and when he looked down the aisle, he saw a man in strange clothing surrounded by shelves with various knives on one side and firearms on the other, both in display cases, of course. The man had a huge gash running down his left arm and was muttering something that Simon couldn't understand, it sounded like it was in some strange and long forgotten language. The knives and guns rattled in the display cases in time with the oddly-clothed man's chanting.

The sign above the aisle that normally told you what can be found therein suddenly changed. Where it used to say that guns were on one side and knives on the other, it suddenly said "hE wIll tEAr hiMseLF AsunDer!" and Simon smelled a strange burning scent on the air, drifting from the strange man.

"Stop!" Simon screamed, and the man turned around to face him, hands on his arms. Simon noticed that blood was pouring out from underneath the man's hands, the glass began to crack as the man kept chanting. More and more tears began to open on the man's body and glass began to fly through the air. The man kept chanting and Simon began to run down the aisle toward him, miraculously avoiding getting cut by any of the shards of glass flying around. Finally Simon reached the man, upon doing so, he placed one hand on the man's head and the other on his jaw, bringing them together as to keep the man from the chant that would soon have torn him apart.

"Thank you," the man whispered, "But I fear that it's too late." With that, more and more cuts opened on the man's body and soon, Simon found himself standing in a pool of blood, the man gone entirely, and soon, the pool of blood was dried up, the only evidence of the whole scene left was the shards of glass covering the ground.

"What…?" Simon muttered confusedly.

"So, what are you?" Jennifer asked without turning around.

"I," the thing answered changing from dog to man, just the opposite of what Jennifer had just seen in the mirror, "am what you might call a werewolf, though we call ourselves the Garou. To be a bit more specific, I'm Doggie B of the Bone Walker tribe, though I gotta say I'm statin' to like bein' called Patches."

"Tell me everything," Jennifer said, the two of them were now back in the bedroom and sitting on her bed. She noticed a strange tattoo on his arm that had also been strangely colored in his fur, it was shaped sort of like a kite, but with a line coming out from the top and points at the ends of all the lines. Then, the dog began to talk.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

"No vampires, no werewolves, no things that bite.

You have no business here."

-"The Monster Words", from Cujo by Stephen King

There wasn't anything going on at the church that day; and yet, after the events of last night, Samuel Gardner felt the need to go there, as if something were calling out to him. He felt that somehow, Jennifer had also been drawn into the web which he had but recently fallen into. Without realizing, he let his left hand drift to the crucifix around his neck. He'd had to replace the chain after he'd ripped it off from around his neck, but he kept a spare, so it hadn't been too difficult. He kept telling himself that it couldn't have been real, and that somehow, Jennifer could convince him otherwise. He knew that what he kept telling himself was wrong.

Samuel sighed as he swung the doors of the church inward and saw Jennifer sitting on the steps to the pulpit. At her feet, the mangy-looking dog with strange colored splotches on its dark grey coat lay, she idly petted the thing. Jennifer's eyes were dead-set on the door, as if she'd known Sam would be coming soon. When Sam walked through the door, the dog looked up at Jennifer, who nodded to it, and then walked away, toward the improvised bedroom.

"Don't deny it, Samuel," Jennifer said, her eyes still locked on where Sam stood in the doorway, "What you saw last night at the diner was the truth, there are monsters in this world."

"No, that can't be, I must have been dreaming, or exhausted at the very least" he answered. For all the times he'd stood at the pulpit and spoken of God and the Devil, he'd never believed in a literal interpretation of the bible, simply that the Devil and his demons were simply symbols of the evil in the heart of man, bred by the original sin in the garden of Eden.

"Are you so sure?" she sneered, standing up. She walked toward the preacher with the gait of a tiger that had spotted a wounded animal, fast, but not quite running. She grabbed the collar of his shirt with her hands, which were coated with a grime that had taken years to accumulate and would likely take weeks if not months to wash away, and tore it open, revealing the scorch mark left by his scalding cross when it touched his skin the night before. "Explain that."

"Oh my God…" Sam whispered, near breathlessly. He looked at her and for a moment, didn't see a young woman in a tattered yellow tank top and faded jeans, but saw only the steel in her grey-blue eyes, her light brown hair no longer seemed dirty and tangled, but seemed radiant and flowing, as some sort of river. Then, the dog walked back in, and he saw something surrounding it. Patches gave off a deep purple aura, speckled with blue and occasional flecks of a sharp cinnamon red.

The dog stared at Samuel, who then got a sense that it knew he was seeing the aura around it. Patches then stood on his hind legs; obscene snapping, stretching and cracking noises filled the air as it shifted back into human form. Suddenly, it wasn't a dog staring at Samuel at all, but rather a young man (he couldn't be any older than Jennifer) dressed in a loose red t-shirt and baggy jeans.

"Hello," the substitute teacher standing at the front of Kelly's fourth period geometry class said, staring at the girl in the back, the one who was dressed in a camouflage shirt with "ha! Now you can't see me!" written on it and a pair of black pants held up by a chain belt, the one who had dyed her hair black and then put blood-red dye on top of that, the one named Kelly Aprils. "My name is Miss Shaw, your regular teacher is out sick today, and I will be taking his place."

Twenty minutes later, after discussing how to inscribe a circle in a triangle, the class was, for the most part, hard at work. Kelly sat at the back, drawing on the back of her assignment, listening to her CD player. Margaret Shaw looked up from behind the teacher's desk, her gaze locked with Kelly's. "You, in the back," Margaret barked, pointing a pen at Kelly, "I want you to stay in here after class."

"I am sad to say," the young man who had once been a dog began, "that the animal attacks going on outside the city are… um… how to put this, they're werewolf dealings. 's even sad'r t' say that the werewolves that be doin' it," the former-dog continued, Samuel noticed that his English was becoming coarser the longer he spoke, "they're still what y'd consid'r th' good wolves. Now, tha' don' mean th't I 'prove o' wha' they're doin', it don' mean that in th' sligh'est. Now, there's s'mthin' I wan' ask y'all t' do f'r me. Now, I don' rilly 'spect you to do for me, but I think you'd benefit from jus' much as I would…"

"Hey, kid," Margaret asked Kelly, now that the class had gone to lunch, "you find out anything about what happened last night?"

"Yeah, I found out that we ain't alone."

"Really?"

"Yeah, searching the web last night, I found this place called Hunter-net. It's a forum for a bunch of others like us. I'm meeting up with a couple of the others tonight; you care to come along?"

"Who are they?"

"Gingerbread294 and Revalation316."

"No names?"

"Nope, we're meeting at St. Maximilian's church at 8, you gonna show?"

"Yeah, count me in."

"Alright, can I go now?"

"Can I have part of that sandwich?" Margaret asked, pointing to the turkey sandwich that Kelly was eating.

"Sure," Kelly answered, tearing off about a quarter of the sandwich and handing it to her substitute teacher.

"Alright, you're free to go."

Simon sighed inwardly as he sharpened a hunting knife that he'd bought at Wal-Mart just that morning. He didn't want the knife, but knew that he needed it.


End file.
